I'm pretty sure you don't actually think that being a "Reaganite" is the same thing as being "responsible," so I don't really understand why you say otherwise. The idea of Ronald Reagan as some epitome of normal family life is pretty risible.
I also think that you've got a false dichotomy when you oppose "violent change" to "slow change." Nonviolent change can happen rapidly. Violent change can be surprisingly slow. The agenda served by characterizing all rapid or radical change as "violent" has a name. It's called conservatism. It's not always wrong, either; but since Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, conservatives have been imputing that behind every liberal project lurks a Jacobin with blood up to his elbows. One need not be entirely unsympathetic to conservative ideals to see that this is one of conservatism's bad habits.
You're on to something when you talk about the state of being young and loose and full of possibility and willing to stay up all night and fight lions if necessary. But I went through that in the late 1970s and early 1980s and it was just as meaningful. The problem with the 1960s is that those kids were the leading edge of the demographic bulge and carried all the media's attention with them. And they still do. Even though there are actually more people my age than there are people their age, they always get the attention. Believe me, I know how you feel about that. However, just as the kingdom of God is within us always, and the golden age of science fiction is twelve, the "sixties" is happening wherever young people are being flaky and intense and seeing how far idealism can take them. I frankly think Dhalgren (1975) has more to say about "the sixties" than all the tracts about the Weathermen ever written. And when I read (for instance) BoingBoing, I know that "the sixties", in the best sense, are roaring along still. Then again, they were in 1848, too.
Final comment. "Is this like Vietnam?" Well, yes, in one sense: as a reminder that history is a bitch, and can turn over the table at any time. Isolation behind two oceans has made Americans into a people who really, really believe in the invulnerability of their position. Fill in the blanks to form a commonly-recognized phrase or slogan: "_____ goeth before a ____."
no subject
I'm pretty sure you don't actually think that being a "Reaganite" is the same thing as being "responsible," so I don't really understand why you say otherwise. The idea of Ronald Reagan as some epitome of normal family life is pretty risible.
I also think that you've got a false dichotomy when you oppose "violent change" to "slow change." Nonviolent change can happen rapidly. Violent change can be surprisingly slow. The agenda served by characterizing all rapid or radical change as "violent" has a name. It's called conservatism. It's not always wrong, either; but since Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, conservatives have been imputing that behind every liberal project lurks a Jacobin with blood up to his elbows. One need not be entirely unsympathetic to conservative ideals to see that this is one of conservatism's bad habits.
You're on to something when you talk about the state of being young and loose and full of possibility and willing to stay up all night and fight lions if necessary. But I went through that in the late 1970s and early 1980s and it was just as meaningful. The problem with the 1960s is that those kids were the leading edge of the demographic bulge and carried all the media's attention with them. And they still do. Even though there are actually more people my age than there are people their age, they always get the attention. Believe me, I know how you feel about that. However, just as the kingdom of God is within us always, and the golden age of science fiction is twelve, the "sixties" is happening wherever young people are being flaky and intense and seeing how far idealism can take them. I frankly think Dhalgren (1975) has more to say about "the sixties" than all the tracts about the Weathermen ever written. And when I read (for instance) BoingBoing, I know that "the sixties", in the best sense, are roaring along still. Then again, they were in 1848, too.
Final comment. "Is this like Vietnam?" Well, yes, in one sense: as a reminder that history is a bitch, and can turn over the table at any time. Isolation behind two oceans has made Americans into a people who really, really believe in the invulnerability of their position. Fill in the blanks to form a commonly-recognized phrase or slogan: "_____ goeth before a ____."